T. Geronimo Johnson

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T. Geronimo Johnson:Welcome to Braggsville is about four UC Berkeley undergraduates who travel from Berkeley to Braggsville, Georgia, the center of Georgia, where they stage a performative intervention, as they call it. Which means that they attempt to protest a Civil War reenactment, and that protest goes helter-skelter.

Jo Reed: That’s author T. Geronimo Johnson talking about his award-winning novel, Welcome to Braggsville. And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.

As you heard Geronimo tell us about Welcome to Braggsville, "Four kids from Berkeley go to Georgia to protest a Civil War reenactment with a pretend lynching. What could go wrong?" Well actually, pretty much everything you might expect, yet not in any way that you’d predict. That’s the power of Johnson’s imagination, observation, and talent. D’aron is a nineteen-year-old white kid who’s from Braggsville and returning home to make a political, social, historical statement with his three friends: Louis, a kung fu comedian from California; Candice, a righteous do-gooder from Iowa; and Charlie, a preppy inner-city kid from Chicago. Southern small-town meets west coast political correctness. And Johnson is an equal opportunity satirist—make no mistake about that. But he doesn’t simplify his characters—he deepens them and their circumstances and so shines a light on the ways we talk through and over each other those times we try to communicate about race and history. Welcome to Braggsville is darkly funny, tragic, audacious both in plot and execution, and profoundly thoughtful. When I spoke with T. Geronimo Johnson, of course I wanted to know what inspired this book.

T. Geronimo Johnson: It's hard to say that there was one single source of inspiration. I lived in the south for quite some time. I, in many ways, identify with that region, and I consider myself a southern, and so, when I lived there, I would pass Civil War reenactments, on occasion, and just knowing a little bit about the history, I had always had this idea in the back of my head about what a Civil War reenactment would look like if you had people playing, sort of, a larger cast of characters than only those who were on the battlefield. What would happen if you could actually involve some of those whose freedom was at stake at the time?

Jo Reed: Before we get into the meat of the book more, let's talk about these four characters. And I'd like to start with D'aron, who is the UC Berkeley student who’s from that small Georgian town.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yeah, D'aron is someone who has gotten as far away from home as possible. He's picked a school on the other side of the world, it feels both culturally and geographically. His joke's that he couldn't get farther from home unless he were to learn how to swim. But once he ends up out in Berkeley, he has a hard time trying to reconcile the world as he knows it, or as he knew it, in this small Georgia town, which is still very much segregated, with the values that he's being exposed to at UC Berkeley. And it's partly because of this anxiety he has about being from the south that he is so willing to make this trip, because in a way, he wants to prove that nothing can go wrong or that nothing should go wrong, and that this reenactment is just an innocent celebration of the city's heritage.

Jo Reed: And he is, you know, to my shock, actually, encouraged by his professor to do this.

T. Geronimo Johnson: His professor does see the potential in the project. So the professor plays a role, in that he does not forbid them from doing it, but he's definitely not the final determining—

Jo Reed: Oh, no, he's not, at all. But it's just like the one adult in the room.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Exactly—

Jo Reed: You might've thought—

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yes. This is true.

Jo Reed: —could've talked them back a little bit.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Right.

Jo Reed: Anyway, that's just my own commentary. Let's talk about Candice. Candice is one of the "4 Little Indians," as they call themselves.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yes, and Candice comes from Iowa. Both of her parents are professors. So she is unlike D'aron, a second or third generation college student, and she feels much more at home in this environment, and so her focus is not on trying to fit in. But instead, on speaking up for injustice whenever she sees it. Now, she also considers herself to be part Native American because she's about one-eighth Native American, and so that's a banner that she ends up flying rather high, over the course of the book. Though I do appreciate her empathy.

Jo Reed: Yeah. Honestly, she annoyed the crap out of me. She was the one person I found so annoying, and I thought D'aron was right. When she talked about her abusive parents, and D'aron translated that into—she wasn't spoiled as much as she thought she should be. It was sort of non—"Oh, yeah."

T. Geronimo Johnson: Right. Of course. Of course. That's a good catch. That's a good catch.

Jo Reed: And then there's Charlie.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yes, and Charlie comes from a single-parent household. He did not have a lot of money, growing up. He's from an urban area in Chicago, predominately black neighborhood, but he had the benefit of attending a boarding school on a football scholarship. So while his arrival at Berkeley is something he doesn't question his right to have in the same way that D'aron does, because Charlie has earned this academically. He is still struggling with fitting in. Unlike the other three, Charlie is a bit more conservative. Plus, he has this secret that he is hiding, that he's been keeping to himself for a number of years.

Jo Reed: I read Charlie as somebody who simply couldn't afford to lose.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Exactly. Exactly. Charlie feels as though he has more at stake, and Charlie does not feel confident that if he squanders one opportunity, he will easily find himself with others to consider. So—

Jo Reed: Precisely.

T. Geronimo Johnson: —each opportunity that comes his way, he tries to make the most of.

Jo Reed: And then there's Louis, the Asian-American kid who is the native Californian.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Of course, yes. There is Louis, who is so many people's favorite character. Louis is the native Californian, who has a very different perspective on the world than his friends. He's the one who, kind of, lights the fuse to get people's attention, and he's also not afraid to say things that offend people, to shock them out of their complacency.

Jo Reed: And it's important that he wants to be a comedian, and he wants to be the next Lenny Bruce Lee, which is a very good line.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yes. Yes, he wants to be the next Kung Fu comedian, and when anyone asks him, "Well, who's Lenny Bruce Lee?" That's his answer, "See, there is no Lenny Bruce Lee. Hence... there is a need for me." But he also is in this position, where because he's Asian, specifically Malaysian, he is often assumed to be everything other than what he is, in terms of his ethnicity. So he’s often viewed as being, say, Middle Eastern or Muslim, or any number of things that he isn't. But people tend to project on him a lot of their anxieties, and so he has developed this comedic sensibility, as a sort of foil and a, kind of, force field.

Jo Reed: Describe Braggsville, because I think it's important to get a sense of that town.

T. Geronimo Johnson: How to describe Braggsville, it's definitely not in "Lonely Planet," as a destination. Braggsville bills itself as the city that love built, in the heart of Georgia. It's this mythical city, dead in the center of the state, and it is a city that was founded by the leader, Bragg, who felt over the years that this city was being looked over and never received the credit that it was due. So it never had the opportunity, for example, to be the capital of Georgia, even though it is geographically located precisely where the capital should be, and even when they apply to host the Special Olympics, that request is denied, as well. So you have this town that feels as though they haven't received their just rewards, even though they have sent more Special Forces soldiers, per capita, than any other American city, off to fight on behalf of the country. So this is where D'aron is coming from, to begin with, a city that feels a little bit downtrodden and a little bit under heel and very much unappreciated for its contributions to the fabric of the culture.

Jo Reed: And it's also a city where everybody knows one another and many people are related to one another. D'aron seems to be related to half the town.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yes. It is indeed a city where everyone knows everyone else's business and everyone else's ancestors. So they've all lived in this small town for several generations. It is decidedly segregated. So the white residents live in Braggsville proper and they all know each other, and then the black residents live in an area of the county known as the Gully, and the Gully is very distinct from the town proper. In between these two areas, there is a wood that is said to be a haunted wood, or like a haunted forest, that's known as the Holler, and so between the black and the white population, you have this actual physical barrier that's said to provide more than just a physical barrier, but actually pose a great risk to your soul and spirit—

Jo Reed: It's haunted?

T. Geronimo Johnson: —if you—yeah, if you try to force your way through.

Jo Reed: Yeah. Now, this is your world that you created. Tell me why you chose to populate it with these four people, primarily.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Well, I was trying to find a way to explore the difficulty of talking about some of the more sensitive subjects that we're dealing with in the public arena today—sexuality, race, class. But also, I wanted to create a space or a canvas that was large enough to allow different points of view and different perspectives to collide and feed and bounce off of one another. And so I knew that I needed characters that could each provide a distinctly different perspective on what it means to live in America today and what it means to be in college at this point in our history.

Jo Reed: And not just any college, but Berkeley. And the Berkeley you describe is certainly smart and its earnest and it's well meaning, but the level of pretention and just plain ridiculousness, is certainly given an equal hearing in your book.

T. Geronimo Johnson: That is definitely something I wanted to explore. There is a point where our sensitivity to language, for instance, which is a big part of being politically correct. But there's a point where our sensitivity to language can, itself, seem to shut down conversation, and that's one of the things that the four characters are wrestling with. What happens when someone who you would consider an ally doesn't know the most recent term for a particular race or sexual orientation? And then, in speaking about that group says something that people find offensive, using an antiquated term that people find offensive can create a situation where this person who really wants to be an ally feels completely disempowered to participate in any kind of useful or helpful way. So I really wanted to explore that language, as well, and that's something that D'aron is wrestling with, coming from a small town where they have not had any courses on, say for example, intersectionality.

Jo Reed: Very few of us have.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Or...

Jo Reed: Yeah.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Right. Of course, yeah, very few of us had. Or like just any of the new ways of thinking about some of the struggles that we're facing, as a society.

Jo Reed: I was so fascinated in the way, both, Berkeley and Braggsville use language, and in very few instances, is it used to clarify or explain. It tends to obfuscate and manipulate.

T. Geronimo Johnson: That does tend to happen. That tends to happen. What happens, though, when you're dealing with the language of an in-group or jargon, be it Berkeley or Braggsville or some subset, you have a group of people who already share certain common values, and so the language often does not need to be as explicit because they are already in agreement on these shared values and on morality. And so what the book ends up doing is giving space for this jargon, or for these tribal ways of speaking, without explaining what these things often mean. So that the reader can have the experience of processing this and, sort of, sitting with the effect that the language has on you, as opposed to me telling the reader what they should or should not think about the various terms that are used throughout the book.

Jo Reed: Well, the thing that I find so compelling about the book is that nothing is black or white. It's not what it means. It's exactly what it means. It's layer upon layer upon layer upon layer. So I really appreciate the complications of how Charlie, because he's there visiting D'aron's family, is immediately accepted in Braggsville, as is Louis. But at the same time, we see how things can go horribly wrong. We see that through various people, and I think the character of D'aron's cousin, Quint, was one of the most interesting to me. Because you make it impossible to pigeonhole, and that is a good thing.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yeah, Quint is one of my favorite characters, as well. When I first started writing this book, one of the things I'd been thinking about, between both the first novel and this one, is the difference between what we are thinking and what we will publicly admit to. And so when I came to Braggsville, I wanted to push deeper into that than I had with the first novel, and so I started thinking about not only what we won't admit we're thinking, but what we don't even know we're thinking. Because that's really what's driving the car, and in this or any given society, we inherit a lot of perspectives and attitude and views on others that aren't our views; right? They're handed down to us, perhaps, from our parents, or we might pick them up from the media. And so in thinking about Braggsville and thinking about these four characters, what I wanted to have space for in the book is for the reader to, kind of—not kind of, but to definitely experience the extent in which sometimes the characters are driven to do things but don't exactly know why. And this is what D'aron starts unpacking towards the end of the novel. To that end, I wanted the town to be, kind of, a character itself, in a way that lets you feel the spirit and the history of it and feel how that history and that spirit is affecting all of the people within the town, even though they may not realize it.

Jo Reed: Yeah. And the way language operates in this book—this book is in different narrative styles, from college essays to stream of consciousness to straight up storytelling.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yeah, I was playing with that a bit, and in putting together a lot of the dialog and thinking about writing about race today or homophobia today or sexism today, I knew that I needed to have many different voices so that the reader would have a chance to hear. I think there's so many things that we've heard about racism or sexism or homophobia or social justice, overall. There's so many things that we've heard that people hear certain trigger words or code words, and mentally, they just cover their ears. And so for the book to be more effective, I knew it needed to have a few different voices so that people might hear a new way of thinking about some of these things. But also, that it needed to demand different attention from the reader, that using the different voices and getting rid of the quotation marks would create a space where the reader would have to come a little bit closer to the book, and if a reader can figure out in those first few chapters how the book is working, I feel like what this gives you is a much more valuable and immersive experience of thinking about these ideas than I would've been able to offer a reader if I had used a more traditional approach and just told a straight narrative all the way through.

Jo Reed: There's actually a really interesting scene, where D'aron and his cousin, Quint, are at a late night improvised barbecue, and the next chapter has a term paper about barbecue.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yes.

Jo Reed: I taught for years, and I just, sort of, held my head and shook it. It's like, "Oh, have I been there."

T. Geronimo Johnson: Now, no one's going to buy the book. That's my joke. You know, tell people there is an academic essay in there, and that's one more reason to pass over it at the bookstore...

Jo Reed: Oh, I'm sorry.

T. Geronimo Johnson: But...

Jo Reed: It was very interesting, just to see how it all becomes grist for the mill.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yes. Yes. And you see D'aron, in that paper, trying to make sense of everything that his friends have done, up to that point, and trying to situate their behaviors inside of these academic theories, and not always doing so successfully, but you sense that he's struggling basically, to make sense of his life, and to make all of the pieces fit together, which is a challenge for any of us. I think that's probably one of the greatest personal challenges, having complete integrity between yourselves, your various selves, and that's what D'aron is after, having integrity between his various selves, the son who's from the south, the student who's on the west coast, the brave student who's keen on social justice who wants to impress Candice. He wants to bring all these things together, and that's hard.

Jo Reed: Very. Very. What I thought you did really well is, I could hear those people's voices, on the Left coast, as well as Braggsville. I really had a sense of the way his father talked, of the way his cousin talked.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yeah, I was definitely trying to—or hoped to give the regions distinct sounds, and then the characters within those regions their distinct voices. Because I think that the voice that a character has, of course, helps the reader distinguish that character from another. But I do also think that people are very attached to their own voices and, like, sort of, the vocal quality of their voice is something that is so much a part of their self-identity. So I felt that giving them these distinct ways of speaking was a way of honoring the full humanity of that character.

Jo Reed: I want to talk a little bit about writing this book. Did you outline? Did you know where you were going when you started? What was your process?

T. Geronimo Johnson: I definitely didn't outline. At some point, I'll step back and look at the entire novel and, sort of, think about the emotional flow. But, usually, I start a novel with a feeling. So I have a feeling that’s in my body and it's triggered by things like experience and things I read, people I talk to, and then, the novel is, for me, the only way to get that feeling into the body of another human being. So as I'm writing this novel, it's, sort of, like I’m charting a ship by the stars and I keep correcting the course, because I'm not exactly sure where I am, relative to anything other than that feeling to which I'm headed. So once I feel I get close to that, then I can go back and, kind of, smooth things out. But, initially, everything is just trying to get closer to a crystallization of this state of being that I couldn't otherwise put into words. And with this one, in particular, I did do a lot of writing, when I was traveling, on my cell phone. I wrote a lot of little bits and pieces on the cell phone to get me started.

Jo Reed: Wow. I'm impressed. You were brought up in New Orleans. Tell me about your upbringing.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Yes. Well, I grew up between New Orleans and Columbia, Maryland. My childhood was split between New Orleans, which I think everyone has some kind of an idea of in their mind, and then on the other hand, I was spending time in Columbia, Maryland, which is a planned community. It's a suburb between DC and Baltimore. So I have these two very different experiences. One that I think of as a planned community, and the other as a planned chaos. I had a very broad range of thinking about what life could or could not be.

Jo Reed: And were you a reader when you were a kid?

T. Geronimo Johnson: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I was a big reader. I, actually, was not allowed to watch much TV, at all, by either of my parents. My parents were divorced. My father became an attorney, and then my mother ended up running a medical newspaper, and so they both valued books and education over everything else, and they both instilled in me what a lot of parents of color instill in their children, which is a work ethic guided by the belief that you have to work twice as hard to be accepted as an equal in this country, if you're a person of color.

Jo Reed: Like Charlie?

T. Geronimo Johnson: Exactly, like Charlie. Yeah, so my parents were very keen readers, keen on me reading, and big proponents and advocates for education.

Jo Reed: When did you first think that writing might be your path?

T. Geronimo Johnson: A few months ago, my mother found an old report card from second grade. The teacher had written, "He likes to write very long stories, very long." And so I wanted to do that, from the beginning. I think that around 18 or 19, I did not know exactly how one would go about being a writer or what that meant. And so I did have a long detour of what I call, "in order to's." Like, the things you do, in order to do what you really want to do. I worked in finance. I worked in real estate. I did a lot of things before I finally realized that I had to make writing a priority, if it was something that I wanted to pursue.

Jo Reed: And you teach?

T. Geronimo Johnson: I do. I do teach rather frequently. I'm the University Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University in San Marcos, and doing some teaching with Oregon State University. So a little bit here and there, and mostly writing, though. I try to avoid thinking of any day as being complete, if I have not gotten any writing done.

T. Geronimo Johnson: My most constant advice is that if this is something you want to do, if you want to be a novelist or a short story writer, then set the time aside and make it a regular practice. I think that's probably my most consistent advice.

Jo Reed: And then, finally, what are you working on?

T. Geronimo Johnson: I am working on a couple of things. So I'm working on two novels that I'll just say are set in the future, sometime—at least a few days after tomorrow.

Jo Reed: Oh, that's time enough, actually. Geronimo, thank you. It really was a pleasure talking with you, and thank you for this book. It was quite a read. I was captivated by it and shocked and laughed and surprised and thought about it a lot. So thank you.

T. Geronimo Johnson: Well, thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for inviting me to be on the podcast.

You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog, or follow us @NEAARTS on Twitter. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Award-winning novelist

Welcome to Braggsville: A madcap and tragic satire that unpacks attitudes about race